


everything rustles

by bartonbones



Category: The Hour
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, an unhealthy coping mechanism, freddie has a life crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 14:13:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1472749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bartonbones/pseuds/bartonbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To the man afraid, everything rustles. </p>
<p>Or, how Freddie Lyon questions everything he thought he knew, and Bel pulls him back. Post 2x06.</p>
            </blockquote>





	everything rustles

**Author's Note:**

> i uh. i watched the finale. i was upset. enjoy!

"I don't want to go back. I'm not going to."

This was maybe the most scandalizing thing Bel has heard from his mouth since—this is my wife, perhaps. But as scandalize and dumbfounding as the words are, as much as they freeze her to the bone, to the core, they are there, and she must react to them.

Freddie still looks like hell—there's no denying it. There are scars on his face, no longer suited for television without caked makeup, less severe than before but present, permanent. He has always been slight but he's never looked so skinny—so lost of his grandeur, his presence, stripped and naked in front of her even as his clothes seem to drown him.

The light that use to shine around him, that Freddie coerced into bending just right, had left him altogether, until there was little but a shadow left. But Bel had expected—had known, that once Freddie was better he would return as he ever was, excited and youthful and filled to the brim with passion and light, pleading to go back to Lime Grove as soon as he could move his legs again.

But Freddie hadn't come back, not like that.

"Freddie—" Freddie, you're making rash decisions again, walking in to loaded guns, tight-fisted fingers, but running away from caring hands, "You can't mean that."

"I do."

His jaw is set, but his hands quiver.

"Freddie, this is—this is everything to you," said Bel. Her voice was as steady and sure as Freddie's hands, but hers are clenched at her sides. If she notices the way Freddie's eyes flicker towards them, the way he leans back slightly, not quite a flinch, she says nothing. "The Hour, it's everything to you, you'd risk your life for a story, Freddie, you can't mean that."

"I did that," Freddie said. His eyes flickered back to her fists again, and Bel forced her fingers to flatten against her sides. Four months, and Freddie's brain has still not caught up to the fact that hands are not always weapons. "Risked my life. Didn't much enjoy it, Moneypenny."

Freddie no longer flinches at her touch, instead leans in to it, so Bel makes a heroic effort to make the name hers again, chiding and friendly and filled to the brim with love, instead of whispered, choked, out on the lawn where she thought he would die.

And, well, she can't argue with that. He did risk his life—ran straight, fast, until his forehead was up against the barrel and he could hear the click of the hammer—and had decided, understandably, he had no desire to go back there again. She didn't want him to go there again, but she'd never thought the barrel extended so far in to his work.

"It doesn't have to be like that again," she said, "Stories aren't always like that."

Freddie's thumb runs over his fingers, pressing hard. He looks down at them and then back up at her, something tight around his eyes, looking entirely too dark.

"They are for me."

Truer words had never come from those lips, and the truth, as freely given, as unasked for, sits heavily and hushes further words. Bel can not move to speak, and Freddie looks like he has nothing to say past, and perhaps he, too, is surprised at just how true those words are—if not the MI6 following him around in black cars and reinforced raincoats, then beaten near death in the basement of a nightclub.

If neither of those, then the destruction of himself, because the story is always more important than everything, even his own needs.

Bel wondered, knew, that it just must be him. He must just have the personality that says to God, please, beat me bloody, you know I deserve it. Maybe his cocky attitude is reprimanded by reminders, you are not the biggest here, you are never going to be in control.

Of all the times she's wanted to deck him one, take a notch out of his over-the-top words, actions, person, she'd never wanted this. This is Freddie at her table, head bowed slightly, not wanting to go back to the job he used to love, because he'd learned what wrath hell can bring to those who were happy where they were.

This is Freddie, James Bond, shying away from touches and looking at hands like hidden knives, this is looking at rings and shying further, because rings hurt more, he'd say, they're sharper, and Bel wore none for weeks, always flattened her hands, never brought them too close, too fast, treated her own hands like concealed weaponry just so Freddie felt safe.

But Bel narrows her eyes, despite her pity, because Freddie has to come back to work. There is no question to this—Freddie Lyon works at Lime Grove, on the Hour, with herself and Hector and everyone else, and nothing is supposed to shake that anymore. Ten months without him was hard enough, but not while she can reach out and grab his hand will she ever, willingly, let it go.

"That's what he wanted," she said. Her voice is clipped, careful. She know what she will say will hurt him, she knows that he does not deserve it.

But Bel has never been more selfish than when in regards to him.

"What?"

Freddie's voice is sharp, confused, his eyebrows drawn and he's blinking in the nervous way he always does, when he's scared or confused or hurt.

"Cilenti," she takes a drag of her cigarette, like the name is nothing to her.

Meanwhile, Freddie's hands clench again, and he lifts his chin slightly, indignantly, grappling for control over his emotions.

"What?" Freddie repeats.

Bel thinks, she's made the wrong choice, and her facade slips.

Freddie looks betrayed.

He looks scared, like those words mean that she would send him back to that basement if her whim suited it. She has never seen him look at her with any less adoration.

Bel isn't sure she can do this anymore, but then in time, he'll grow to be thankful, she's sure. When he has a story that excites his passions but does not risk his life, he will kiss her with gratitude for making sure he got back.

She gestures, cigarette in her hand, to his face.

"He ruined it for television, your face," she said. "He didn't want you to go back."

For a minute, there's rage on Freddie's face, and she thinks she hit the right point, the one that will make him want to fight back, prove him wrong, march right in to Lime Grove and not leave until Bel drags him out.

And then he stand up with such force, his chair clatters back, turns his back to her, his hands clenching at his sides in rhythm, like he can't get them to stop.

"Freddie—"

She's gone to far.

"I hate you."

He's practically vibrating with tension.

"You don't mean that." Bel says, and she gets up from her chair, too.

Please don't mean that.

"I do," said Freddie. He will not turn his face, and the words that joked before, that were said with such definite tones of not-meaning it, were coldly delivered, leaving no room to wonder on their inflections. He hated her, he must, or he would not say that. "You think—I still have nightmares. Two bloody months, and I still can't sleep."

Bel flinches back, knows she has stepped too far, that what once lit fire to Freddie's pride, instead burnt his skin.

"Oh, God, Freddie—"

She's only witnessed a nightmare once, while he was still in the hospital. How his lips had opened slightly and his eyes had clenched so tightly and his breath dragged on brittley, laboured. How she'd touched him to wake him up, and his eyes had snapped open immediately and he'd believed, for seconds that stretched too long, that she would hurt him.

And now she has.

"I can't go back, I've decided, I'm not going back, I—" he took a breath, trying to steady himself but failing, "I hate it, Bel, I hate it."

He meant it, she knew. He really meant it. Passion is passion but it can be used positively and it can be used to hate, and all it took to switch it over was one wrong move, and Freddie is still shaking.

He loved getting the story, loved reporting it, risking everything, but then he'd made a misstep, lost his footing, and fell too far.

She shook her head soundlessly, and grabbed his shoulder. He only barely didn't flinch at her, but he let her hand stay. She was still shaking her head.

"I know," she said. Selfish as she was, as much as she needed everything to be as it was, so that they could focus on them and not just Freddie not dying, as much as she wanted that with her whole soul, she was not heartless. "I know, Freddie."

Freddie shook his head, pressing his hand to his mouth.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," he said. His voice wasn't desperate, or shaking, or on the verge of tears. His voice was fast, sure, sounding the way he always lied to himself when he felt vulnerable. "But I'm not going back. I'm not doing that again."

"You don't have to."

"I'm not going back."

His voice was still determined, still steady, but stony now, desperately so.

"I'm not telling you to anymore, Freddie," she said. "I—made a mistake. I thought you were—"

Healthier, happier, more healed, untouchable.

"I thought you'd want to."

"I don't," said Freddie, "I'm so sure, I don't, it isn't worth it,"

He moved away from her hand, which had been rubbing circles into his shoulder, and turned to face her.

There was passion, bright and burning in his eyes, and it terrified her.

"I've thought about it, and I've thought, and it isn't worth it, Bel, it isn't worth it," He started moving, pacing almost, "It's just—stories, real ones, maybe, but they're stories. People don't watch The Hour to—to make changes, to feel regret, to act on what we say. They watch it to be entertained. It's pointless. We're not journalists, Bel, we're circus clowns."

"And—I'm not risking my life, I'm not risking other people's lives, just so that the public can sit in front of the telly and...and carry nothing away, like they've just watched a bloody soap advert. It isn't  _worth it._ "

The words hurt to hear. It was every much Bel's passion as it had ever been Freddie's, and even though the words were nothing she'd not heard before—that news reporting was unimportant, trivial, pointless shouts of revolution, danger, betrayal, to a world that didn't care, didn't need to know—hearing them from  _Freddie_  hurt so much more than anyone else.

"It—" She can't lie. Not to Freddie, he's always been able to tell when she's lying. But she can't hear this any longer, not when it cuts up at her heart and  _hurts_. "Freddie, please, just—you're hurting. I'm sorry. I am so sorry, I should have never brought him up."

"No, you shouldn't have." Freddie snaps, and then there's a hand over his face again and he seems to sink in to the floor, cringing now, as if he's only just realized the consequences of getting up so abruptly after all the abuse and healing his body had taken.

"I don't know what I'm going to  _do_ , Moneypenny," His voice doesn't sound steady anymore, not sure, not like anything it's ever sounded as long as she'd known him. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I can't go back to that, I can't  _stand_ it."

He rubs his hand over his face, and then presses it to his mouth, like he's going to start crying.

Bel drops down next to him, hands hovering for a second before pulling him closer.

"You are going to do what you always do, Freddie," She couldn't ignore how hard he was shaking, even if he did not let out a single sob, "You are going to infuriate people. And inspire them. In some way, Freddie, where you can do it, you are going to do what you've always done."

She pulled back, arms stretched out but hands on his shoulders.

"And you're going to do it with me."


End file.
